as the sun died i promised i would seek you out
by menz815
Summary: Jack thinks about Claire. Inspired by the EW photoshoot. Hints of Jack/Kate.


**A/N:** This was going to be totally Jack and Claire, but honestly you really can't expect me not to include Kate. Plus, you say Jack and Claire and Kate automatically gets sucked into the picture. ic what u did thur Darlton......

**Disclaimer: **Don't own them.

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_"I don't trust myself." _You had said, and you had meant it, maybe more than anything else in your life. After everything you had been through that was the only belief that remained unshattered. You knew it was no coincidence that you no longer had any faith. You heard the fate of your sister and you wondered who it was that was so bent on destroying you. You wondered if you had it in you to save her. To fix her.

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"Let me guess. You're the oldest." Sarah said lightly as you checked her vitals. Her voice was still hoarse from the trach tube that had been down her throat for surgery.

"What?" You said chuckling slightly.

"You just seem like the big brother type. Real protective." She explained, eyes bright with laughter.

You shook you head, laughing lightly, before answering. "Nope. Only child."

She looked at you teasingly and opened her mouth to speak. "Too bad. Some girl out there is really missing out."

Years later, you had come to fine that couldn't be farther from the truth.

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Her eyes had seemed familiar even in the chaos on the beach that day you had crashed. You had turned away and onto the next patient and yet she never really left your mind. Less than a year later, when you learned who she was, the dreams began. Your father, blue eyes alight like a flame, loomed in the darkness. "You shouldn't have left her there," he would say. And then those eyes were suddenly hers, and you'd wake up, not sure of what you were more afraid of, the fact that she may be alive or the realization that she may already be dead.

Either way you had failed. You had failed a lot of people. The hurt was just all the more worse because she was your sister.

So you buried her with your father. But just like him, she kept reappearing.

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It was easier for her to forget. You knew she kept a lot of things buried inside, that she was used to the weight of a secret because she was a criminal. But with that thought always came guilt because despite what she was, it was not what defined her, and you loved her because of all of it, not in spite of it. You wondered how anyone could be so strong. You envied her for that.

You watched a little boy sit down at the table. He had your father's eyes. He had her hair.

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You came home late one night from the hospital and wandered past his room. Kate was singing 'Catch a Falling Star' and suddenly you were back on the beach listening to a young mother sing the same song to her baby. It was a song you knew too. You used to associate it with blue eyes and happiness. Now every note seemed empty, devoid of promise.

You tried to ignore it, but then the dreams came to life.

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You knew why she was here. She asked you not to ask, but you weren't naïve. You knew her too well. She was going back to do the one thing that you could never seem to do. She was going back to save your sister.

She had been buried so deep in this new you, this man of faith, that you could barely feel her anymore. You could barely feel anything. And when your destiny was presented to you, you saw it as your opportunity to lift the burden of the sister you never knew completely off your memories. You thought this was the way to save her. To fix things for good.

You were wrong.

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While your mission had failed, hers had just begun. As she left to follow Sawyer, you knew that she was also looking for Claire. You marveled at her courage and togetherness. You were a broken mess. You had little hope that she would even be alive.

But when you found out Claire was infected, there was only one thought on your mind. "_I have always been with you,"_ she had said three years ago when you had needed it most. Now was your chance to change things, to save her. To fix all the things you had broken, including yourself.

You had her back.


End file.
